Letter #7

February 20, 2012

Hi everyone!! 

Wow, I didn't realize how many people will be reading my emails, ha! I have so much to tell you guys this week!! So many things happened, it was a crazy week! But an awesome one too! 

First, I saw the guys from Kid History!! They walked right in front of me on the square! I was going to say hi but I thought it would be awkward, because I was behind them... ha. but it was cool! Also, I went to the temple for the first time this morning. :) WOW, that temple is insanely beautiful!! I couldn't even believe how pretty it was. I loved loved loved it! The old people are so adorable, haha! I liked the live session; its more entertaining than a regular session. ;) It made me appreciate what the pioneers truly did for us, mostly for the Lord. They knew with all of their hearts that this Church is true that they literally gave up all they had. I'm learning a lot about the pioneers here--Mom and Dad, if you could send me some pioneer stories with your emails I would love that! We have some in our script here too, but I would like to have a variety that I can share. 

THANK YOU to Emily and Jeff and Eva, mom, and April Griffiths for the packages!! I got 3 on Valentine's Day! :) Made me so happy! Ha! Everyone was jealous. Jeff and Em sent me a video of Eva and I just cried!! I love that beautiful girl!! Please pray that I get called to the Nauvoo Mission! ;) Really though, it was so much fun to get something in the mail. I didn't realize how great mail really is until I got out here, ha. Mom I actually did get your email this week, sometimes I don't have enough time to read and write though, so now I usually print off the emails and read them later. I did get it though. :) and wow, how cool that you had written me about Jan Risso and I didn't even read your email this week, ha! I kept thinking all last week how I needed to ask you about that though. Kinda cool! 

Also, could you get me Emily Anderson's address please? She sent me sugar cookies a while back (SO sweet of her) but I don't have her address to write and thank her. And call Sis Anderson and let her know I got them and thank you! :) so sweet of them! 

Well like I said, a lot happened this week! I got passed off on my tours, so now I can give the Elders (from the SLC mission) and their investigators a tour. :) Cool huh? They challenged us to pass-off after the second week and I did! Woot! Also, we had another baptism this week from two of my comps old investigators! Kenny and Barbara! Kenny's from Oregon, he's only 17 years old, coolest kid ever!! He and I clicked right away. He reminds me of one of my EFY boys (if you put this on the blog, Jordan he reminds me of one of our boys, I think his name's Tyler? The grey hat kid, ha! I can't remember anymore!) and Barbara is this sweet old lady from Florida. She is seriously the cutest! But the poor thing had another stroke a couple days before we called, and you can tell.  :( it made me so sad. But so happy that she has been baptized. We get to call these former investigators/converts every once-in-a-while and check up on them. 

So, highlight investigator of the week... definitely has to be Mark; he's from Uganda. He is seriously the coolest guy ever!! He's working in Rwanda right now, doing humanitarian work for the community, but he works with the Church all of the time. He was also a former investigator of Sis Wilson. He is seriously the man! He meets with missionaries once a week and they talk about what they can do to help keep Rwanda safe, service, and they give him kind of a brief discussion. Unfortunately, the Church is closed down right now. There aren't any Church meetings in Rwanda right now. So sad. This has been going on for about 3 months now. Mark is pretty upset by it!! He told us over the phone, "Pray for Rwanda! Pray for Rwanda! We need the Church again!" I think it's being closed down right now for safety reasons... not completely sure, he's hard to understand sometimes. Ha. So fam, keep Rwanda in your prayers so Mark and the missionaries can get Church going again!! We are so blessed to not have problems like that where we live, that we can have Church every week and not have it be closed down by the government. Crazy stuff!

Saturday was really fun! It's been pretty slow since I've been here, but a ton of people came this weekend. There were a couple of conferences and other things going on. We got 3 referrals on Saturday, which is a lot considering we only got like 8 the whole week, ha! Some of you are probably laughing at "only" 8 referrals. :) Yesterday, I got to give a tour to two people from Sao Paulo, Brazil. They were a really cool couple! They both asked us questions constantly about the church, which you don't always get, because a lot of people just want a tour; they don't want you "preach" to them. Angelo (the husband) is pretty much agnostic. He doesn't believe in organized religion, and he's completely into science. He thinks its silly, ha. His wife however, Rebecca, is Catholic and loves Jesus Christ. We took them up to the Christus and she LOVED it. She told us in very broken English that seeing Christ being depicted that way (instead of being on a cross) is much better. She said "I feel peace. Not sad." It was so cool! Unfortunately they didn't refer at the end, but I KNOW she felt the spirit when she saw the Christus. We explained to them how and why we have this statue of Christ, because the one with him on the cross is kind of gruesome. It's not happy. It doesn't translate into love, peace, hope... all of these things. Very cool. 

Right after this tour, we took a group of 3 around. I was on exchange with my District Leader Sis Carvana. She is so awesome!! She is an incredible missionary. She has a way of explaining things so simply and clearly, the people can really understand it and relate with her. Anyways, one of the ladies was from Austria which is where Sis. Carvana is from, so she pretty much gave the tour. But it was a really good learning experience for me. Her friends were both members of the Church (a married couple). You could tell they had so much love for her and wanted this for her SO bad, but I think they were kind of overwhelming her a bit... the man especially kind of took over the tour. The lady from Austria was Catholic, and it was pretty obvious that she wasn't interested in this right now. Sometimes all you can do is be a good example to others! Because shoving it down there throats doesn't always work so well. 

So Grandma and Grandpa asked me a few questions :) I'll try to answer them quickly. I don't have much time left. Teaching over the phone is still hard for me, ha! I have NEVER liked talking on the phone... everyone that knows me knows that, ha. But I'm getting better at it. It was really hard for me at first because I felt like a salesman. Anyways, to be honest it is exactly like teaching people in person, just a little different. We call them if they're a referral, get to know them a bit, explain how important this message is to their friend/ family that referred them, and then ask them if they would like to have the missionaries over. If they say yes, we then ask if we can teach them over the phone until the missionaries get there (sometimes it can take months, especially in other countries. All of our people from Africa take a long time) but ya! It's really cool. We teach them only for about 15 min though, so it's like half of the first lesson, sometimes less. But we always challenge them to read the BOM and pray and we actually pray with them over the phone. Pretty cool! 

A typical day is insane, to be honest. I never ever rest. Ha! We're always doing something. Here was my day yesterday: 

We have Church at 7:30am on Sunday; it's all of the sisters together, our mish president and Bishop and his counselors, and then the hosts that work in the JSMB pass the sacrament. Cute little old men. :) Then Zone meeting at 8:30 (right after Church), then its motors, which is texting investigators, calling them, or chatting online on mormon.org. Depends on what you are supposed to do on your schedule. Then we had lunch at 12, then square, (proselyting),then motors again at 3 (Sunday is a really good day to call people), then companion study ( we have 2 hours each day for the 12-week training), then dinner at 6, then square again at 7, then the Temple Construction desk in the South VC at 8, then home at 8:45, then daily planning at 9, then lights out at 10:30. And Usually we wake up and exercise at 6:30, then personal study at 7, then comp study at 9, and we have to be on the square at 10. \

I actually was in a session with Tad D. Callister this morning in the temple. :) Haha. Elder Perry walks the grounds every single morning before anyone is there. So cute! We're not allowed to talk to them though, only if they come up and talk to us first. My apartment is really nice! Just one bathroom, two bedrooms. It's really nice to only have 2 other roommates! 

Mom, could you maybe send me one of my other straighteners? They should be in the bottom drawer of my bathroom. Thanks! Also, I think I'm going to get my hair done next week... just fyi! 

Well family, I love you all. Thanks for all the love and support. I miss you and pray for you daily! :) Thanks for the prayers! I seriously feel them working! 

One more story I forgot to share...

I called this girl yesterday, she was a referral, and her name is Liz. Such a cute girl! I figured out that the less I sound like a professional, the more people will talk to me. Lol! I know that sounds so dumb but it seriously works!! Being on the phones can be so hard sometimes, especially because you have to build a relationship with these people and you can't see their faces, and they can't see yours! But anyways, I called her and I thought, "Heavenly Father, please just let me get one good phone call!" (I've been having some bad ones lately... people usually don't answer their phones too). Anyways, I called her, and it was like I was calling my best friend that I hadn't talked to in years. It was seriously amazing! She and I got along so great, I actually forgot the reason why I was calling her for a minute, ha! It was cool because I was able to share with her my testimony, and her friend’s testimony, and how this message I would share is so important to her friend Alyssa, and how she really wanted her to hear it. I think that really stuck with her. She didn't agree to meet with missionaries, but she agreed to have me send her a copy of the Book of Mormon, AND to teach her over the phone! :) I got my own investigator people! This is a big deal!! Haha! Calling people was seriously the scariest thing in the world, but it's getting so much easier! Especially when I have good experiences every once in a while... Hopefully Heavenly Father will help me out with that! ;) It's amazing how much I love these people. I've never even seen their faces before! But here on the mission it's crazy, because your love increases for people when you share your testimony with them... I had never thought of that before, until now. I'm learning so much, I just love it out here! 

Oh, and I forgot to mention that quote on the bottom... It's my new favorite quote, it was in the missionary quotes book Kate Stone gave to me. Tell her thank you again!! And tell Chandler to write me! ;) 

Love you all SO much! 

Sis Sav :)

PS. We can take people on tours pretty much anywhere now! Tell you more about it next week!   

"In this world, it is not what we take up, but what we give up that makes us rich." Henry Ward Beechler